#1 for songs that are annoying to hear at least twice in one night
when you're traveling alone, it's prohibitively expensive to call
home, and you haven't found any English-speaking travelers to hang out
with: this mix of Alvin the chipmunk singing "lonely, I'm so lonely,
I've got nobody to call my own..." with rap in the background. So,
having biked 50+ miles from Ubatuba to Sao Sebastiao, laid on the
metal floor of the ferry to Ilha Grande, and lounged around a nice
hotel room for the remainder of the day, I'm now feeling a bit lonely.
Let's see: reading "Property Management for Dummies" is a little
dull, Cartoon Network in Portugese makes no sense to me, and I've
already gone online and bought some expensive gadget I don't need. I
know: I'll drink some more beer and contemplate life. So, here it is:
50 things I'd really like to do before becoming worm food. Realistic
or not, I better get at least half of these done:
1. get a pilot's license
2. get a scuba license
3. drive over 200 miles per hour
4. bike over 50 miles per hour
5. learn to meditate
6. climb Corcovado's K2 route solo, without falling or cheating
7. climb Everest without a sherpa
8. climb El Capitan, Yosemite; no cheating or falling here, either
9. complete an Ironman triathlon faster than at least 1 finisher who's
younger than me
10. go into outer space
11. get and stay married for love
12. have > 1 kid, because 1 is putting all your eggs in one basket:)
13. raise said kids to be better than me in every way
14. not have to worry about money
15. be able to tell my family that they don't have to worry about money
16. get in a fair fight for a good reason and kick somebody's ass
17. get my ass kicked in a fight
18. start something entirely new, preferably an extreme sport,
business, slang, or any combination of the aforementioned
19. have close friends agree that i1m one of the craziest and smartest
people they know
20. debate someone I think is an idiot on national television and win
21. turn down a very large bribe
22. stay close with 10 close friends of no relation to me for more
than a decade each
23. never act my age
24. become truly fluent in another language
25. play a crucial role in a candidate winning an important political post
26. swim to and from Alcatraz Island in the same day
27. jump off something huge with just one of those massive
suicide-prevention air mattress things to break my fall
28. get listed in the Guinness Book of World Records
29. mentor someone
30. write something a lot of people read, debate, and care about
31. leave the world a better place than I found it
32. go BASE jumping
33. fly a helicopter
34. never let people call me "Mr." anything
35. give a speech that makes over 1,000 people laugh, cry, and laugh
so hard that they cry
36. bike a double century (200 miles) in a day
37. become much more humble
38. become more patient
39. maintain and improve my mind and body
40. have a beer with a Nobel laureate
41. thank the important teachers I've had
42. build a house that I'd want to live in (or at least a cabin with net access)
43. succeed when everybody thinks I'll fail
44. fail when everybody thinks I'll succeed
45. not care what everybody thinks
46. drink really good champagne with people I love, toasting every
glass, until we can't remember what we're toasting
47. push myself harder than I think I can
48. have a pet monkey
49. do something worthy on Antarctica
50. go over Niagara Falls
And then I go back to the hotel and listen to Chuck Pahluniak's latest
book, "Haunted," on tape while watching muted Portuguese Cartoon
network and drinking a beer called Bohemia.